Some decades ago a friend of mine, a college senior way back then, was attending a conference at a large, distinguished university of “pre-faculty” students, collegians who hoped to pursue a higher-education vocation in the next few years. The three-day gathering culminated in a large banquet, some final comments on the benefits of professordom from several university presidents, and a question & answer session.

An overwhelming sense of the Glory and Oneness of God made Guru Nanak (1469-1539), the founder of Sikhism, impatient with religious divisions, doctrines, and rituals. This sense of the Oneness of God is for me at the very heart of the interfaith journey. There are many practical reasons why interfaith cooperation is vital and as many attempts to find a theological or philosophical justification for it.

“Wisdom includes action as well as knowledge,” maintains Joseph Prabhu, a professor of philosophy and religion for four decades, a passionate interfaith activist, and Mother Teresa’s first altar boy in India. “Action brings insight into dynamic motion,” Prabhu explains, “and insight without thoughtful action, to my mind, is seriously incomplete.”

Oceti Sakowin Camp is a place of juxtapositions and marvels. Tribal leaders ceremonially sing and drum near the sacred fire while helicopters chop and drones buzz overhead. Ten thousand peaceful and prayerful water protectors abut a militarized police force of extractive corporation-protectors.

In the shadow of the ancient walls of the Old City of Jerusalem, on a sunny day in April, I am leading a small group of prophets down a pathway into the Kidron Valley, and then up the slopes of the Mount of Olives. I call them “prophets,” but these women and men in their twenties are not in old-fashioned robes or unkempt beards, nor roaring dire warnings about the end of time.

On October 12th of this year, I was on a train between Moscow and Saint Petersburg traveling with members of the Slavyanka Russian Chorus on a concert tour of Russia.That particular morning a number of us were standing in the aisles or sitting on the arms of train seats, rocking between concert locations. We were saying the Ashamnu prayer, the prayer of confession and atonement for Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year in the Jewish calendar.

Generally speaking, the word wisdom often connotes a holistic knowingness harvested from the totality of one’s life experience, including knowledge gained through intellectual conceptualization and empirical observation. From a spiritual perspective however, Wisdom (note the capital “W”) is generally said to be the result of a transcendent insight that surpasses, informs, and then guides our everyday thoughts, perceptions, and mental projections of reality.

1. Wisdom is not a philosophy or a curriculum, but a way of knowing. It’s not about knowing more but knowing deeper, knowing with more of yourself involved. 2. Wisdom is three-centered knowing: it engages mind, emotions, and body in a single, integral act of perception.

Wisdom, Chochmah in Hebrew, is the first of God’s manifestations and the means by which creation happens. I am the deep grain of creation, the subtle current of life. God fashioned me before all things; I am the blueprint of creation. I was there from the beginning, from before there was a beginning. I am independent of time and space, earth and sky.

An infant opens its eyes and ears to the world, and perceives an ocean of sensation. Gradually it learns to distinguish patterns – mother, father, its own hands, its feet. The ocean of sensation begins to make sense as patterns emerge. An ocean of indeterminate sensation gives way to understanding: the beginnings of knowledge.

The Prophet Muhammad said, “Wisdom is like the truly faithful one’s stray camel; he (she) will recognize it when he (she) finds it.” Within the Way of Islam and the mystical path of Sufism, wisdom is received through the Qur’an (revelation of the “Book of God” conveyed through the heart of the Prophet Muhammad) and the example of how the Prophet, himself, lived, as well as through the “Book of Nature."

The Generous Source of our being has brought us to this world and has given us intelligence, insight, compassion, and the possibility to discern: the subjective perspective from the objective, appearances from reality, beginnings from endings, the transient from the enduring.

Shariputra, any noble son or noble daughter who so wishes to engage in the practice of the profound perfection of wisdom should clearly see this way: they should see perfectly that even the five aggregates are empty of intrinsic existence. Form is emptiness, emptiness is form; emptiness is not other than form, form too is not other than emptiness. Likewise, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness are all empty.